During long trips, children often become restless. Moreover, young children often have difficulty appreciating the concept of elapsed time. As a result, when a child asks the familiar questions “Are we there yet?,” or “How much longer?”, a response of an actual distance or number of minutes remaining for the trip may not be understood.
Attempts have been made to guide children in learning to tell time. However, these attempts have been primarily directed to improving a child's ability to read the face of a clock or to understand the various quantities of time, such as minutes and hours. A mastery of these skills, nonetheless, does not provide a child with the ability to estimate and appreciate, for example, how long the passage of an hour actually is. This problem becomes particularly apparent in the context of long periods of travel, during which many restless children feel compelled to ask about the trip's progress every several minutes.